Fourteen years after Windows 8 got mocked for putting touch on laptops, Apple is reportedly days away from showing off a touchscreen MacBook Pro as if they’re inventing the genre. Steven Sinofsky, the ex-Windows chief who led Windows 8, hasn’t forgotten anything!
Windows Latest spotted Sinofsky sharing Apple’s event invite on X with a rightfully phrased question. “Should I dig up all the headlines about adding touch to Windows? All those that said no one understands how to use it? That touch doesn’t belong on a real™ computer,” he wrote, before adding, “Ugh I can’t. This is all about start menu. Apple doesn’t even have one, though Spotlight Apps=”just type”“
Apple’s “Pro and Tell” event is on October 28. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that it will bring OLED MacBook Pros with touchscreens. Apple obviously hasn’t confirmed the touchscreen yet, but if it’s real, Apple is late to a party Microsoft started in 2012, and knowing Apple, it’ll act like the host.
Steve Jobs said touchscreen laptops make your arm want to fall off
Apple’s executives argued against touchscreen Macs for more than a decade, and they were rarely subtle about it.
At the “Back to the Mac” event in October 2010, Steve Jobs explained why Macs got multitouch trackpads instead of touchscreens. “We’ve done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical,” he said. “It gives great demo, but after a short period of time you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off.”
Yes, holding your arm up to a screen for hours would be tiring. But who is doing that? HP’s Ken Bosley, whose company already sold TouchSmart PCs, responded that touch was never meant to be the only input, as HP’s machines kept the keyboard and mouse, and its touch laptops could flip into tablets.
In April 2012, Tim Cook took a shot at Windows 8 before it launched. “You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user,” Cook told analysts on Apple’s earnings call.
Two years later, on the Mac’s 30th anniversary, Craig Federighi told Macworld, “It’s obvious and easy enough to slap a touchscreen on a piece of hardware, but is that a good experience? We believe, no.” When macOS Big Sur’s roomier design sparked touchscreen rumors in 2020, he insisted it was “in no way related to touch.”
Windows 8 took the hit, but Microsoft kept making touchscreen PCs
Windows 8 launched on October 26, 2012, and the headlines were brutal. TechCrunch went with Microsoft’s Windows 8 Shoehorns Touch Into Desktops And Laptops: This Won’t End Well, arguing that “touch and traditional desktop form factors are relatively incompatible.” By August 2013, Computerworld published Users tell Microsoft: We hate Windows 8 touchscreen PCs.
Not everyone agreed, of course. A month after launch, The Verge’s Sean Hollister wrote that he was surprised to find touchscreen laptops “don’t suck,” adding, “A touchscreen isn’t a replacement for a keyboard or mouse, it’s a complement.” This is the proper answer to the gorilla arm argument.
Fortunately, Microsoft didn’t back down. The original Surface Pro went on sale on February 9, 2013, for $899, with a 10.6-inch touchscreen, a pen in the box and “the power and performance of an Intel Core-powered PC in a tablet package.” In 2014, Surface Pro 3 was pitched as “the tablet that can replace your laptop.”
Ironically, Apple launched the iPad Pro with a keyboard cover and a stylus in 2015, and Satya Nadella couldn’t resist. “Even our competition has decided that it’s not a refrigerator and a toaster but it’s actually a 2-in-1,” he told the Australian Financial Review in 2016. Today, Windows touchscreen laptops come in every shape, from regular clamshells to 360-degree convertibles like Lenovo’s Yoga and HP’s Spectre x360, and detachables like Surface Pro.
Apple users are stuck with whatever Apple decides for them, and now, it’s the tried-and-tested touchscreen that the common Apple folk will deem a Cupertino innovation.
Sinofsky says the Windows 8 hate was about the Start menu, not touch
Sinofsky’s second point is interesting, to say the least, and my reading is that he blames the backlash on Windows 8’s Start screen. Windows 8 replaced the Start menu with a full-screen Start screen, even on PCs without touch, and that’s what people hated.
Microsoft brought the Start menu back in Windows 10, but by then, the idea that “touch doesn’t belong on a PC” had already stuck to Windows 8. Five years into Windows 11, the Start menu is still a sore spot, and Microsoft has already tried different tweaks to it, with the latest one making it smaller and more customizable.
Apple doesn’t have that problem, because macOS has no Start menu to break. Jokes aside, Spotlight lets you find apps by just typing, which is also what Windows 8’s Start screen let you do, but by touch!
I’ve always thought touchscreens on laptops are a good idea, so I’m glad Apple is coming around, not because I’m switching gears, but because when Apple does something, OEMs will likely follow, and we may see touchscreen PCs creeping into the more price-sensitive segments.
Either way, we’ve very recently seen Apple’s trick play out with the Surface Duo, which Apple reimagined as the iPhone Duo six years later, complete with marketing photos that look like Microsoft’s, and Microsoft people weren’t amused.
Credit where it’s due, Apple’s M-series chips will probably make this one of the fastest touchscreen laptops around. But Apple shouldn’t get to market touch on a laptop as a breakthrough just because it finally changed its mind.
Does your current laptop have a touchscreen? If yes, how often do you use it?
